


A Motherfucking Dragon

by vands88



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: (this was meant to be "12 times" but apparently I can't count), Background WayHaught, Did I mention FLUFF?!, Dolls Has Feelings, Dolls secretly likes Taylor Swift, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Set during S1 but with one pretty obvious S2 spoiler about Dolls, a lot of swearing, btw I now have aggressive headcanons about Dolls' music taste, or doesn't???, this is mostly bickering and UST tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-06 00:15:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11589093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vands88/pseuds/vands88
Summary: or, thirteen times Wynonna suspected that Dolls might actually be human, and one time she knew for sure that he wasn’t (and found it hot anyway)





	A Motherfucking Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [parliament-of-owlets](https://parliament-of-owlets.tumblr.com/) for the beta!

Wynonna suspected that Dolls wasn’t human within minutes of meeting him because no one on earth could possibly be so boring and emotionless. Except that sometimes - _sometimes_ \- Dolls would do something so oddly human, so completely Un-Dolls, that it would force Wynonna reconsider the whole thing.

I

The first time Wynonna suspected her partner may actually be human was when she saw him crying. It was disturbing, and unnatural, and just plain _wrong_. 

She didn’t think Dolls even had simple bodily functions, let alone the ability to make tears. But she saw him, plain as day, hunched over the steering wheel; his shoulders heaving and his cheeks wet with moisture. It was just after that thing in the woods. He hated the woods. She wondered if that was why or if it was another secret he was hiding from her. 

She wanted to ask. Instead, she suppressed the urge and took a cold, aimless walk around the block, before sliding into the passenger seat ten minutes later with two (now lukewarm) coffees. She didn’t say a damn thing. 

II

The second time was just as weird.

Waverly was making some kind of cake at the homestead when Dolls decided to pitch in. He was sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, briefing Wynonna (and by extension, Waverly) on the latest incident when, between gruesome details of the case, he suggested that Waverly added precisely two drops of vanilla extract. 

“Or flavouring will do if you’ve got it,” he added with a sip of coffee, “but make it three drops.” And then he went back to describing the gun entry wound like Normal Dolls would do.

Wynonna narrowed her eyes across the table at him. 

“What?” he asked when he’d picked up on her scrutiny, “I can’t have interests?”

She narrowed her eyes further, not believing for a second that someone non-human would choose “baking” as a hobby. “I don’t know you at all, do I?”

He tilted his head and told her to concentrate, which meant that no, she knew fuck all about one Xavier Dolls. 

III

Wynonna was a badass motherfucker, which meant she approached her monthlies like a mild inconvenience. Most months. There was one time though, a couple of weeks into the whole Bobo mess, when she knew she must have done something epic to piss off Mother Nature. Her whole body ached, and although she wrapped herself in blankets and hot water bottles and doused her body with painkillers and alcohol, she still crawled to bed that night feeling like she’d been run over by a truck with snow chains. 

The next morning, after having slept for two measly uninterrupted hours, she shuffled into Dolls’ office and curled up next to the heater as casually as she could she possibly could.

She could tell he wasn’t convinced though. After five minutes of stilted small talk, he crossed his arms, leant back against the desk, and frowned. “Okay Earp, what’s wrong? You look like shit.”

“Geez, thanks, you sure know how to flatter a girl.”

“I’m serious. You look half-dead. You sick or something?”

She snorted. “You could say that.” 

He frowned even deeper. (How was that possible?)

She sighed, finally taking pity on him, and explained, “It’s my routine punishment for having female anatomy. As if the patriarchy wasn’t enough,” she added under her breath. “It’s just... a little worse than usual. Nothing I can’t handle.” 

He looked confused before his mouth formed a little ‘o’ of understanding. He made a strangled noise, turned a little red, and then deliberately busied himself at his desk. Wynonna breathed a sigh of relief, considering the conversation dropped, but then she saw him packing a bag. Before she could even question it, he was out the door. 

Dolls returned an hour later with a mug of herbal tea, a bunch of bananas, three different boxes of pain killers, two large bars of chocolate, a filled hot water bottle, and a blush so deep Wynonna could see it from across the room. An actual _blush_.

“I… don’t…” Wynonna started, staring down at the paper bag of groceries that was unceremoniously dumped in her lap. “What?” and then “Bananas?” and finally settled on, “You are _so_ weird.”

He straightened and turned away without so much as an explanation. 

“Okay,” she said, biting into the first chocolate bar, “Not talking about it. Gotcha, weirdo.”

And if, somewhere between the hot tea and the second painkiller, she smiled at his turned head, then he didn’t need to know.

IV

Wynonna was very good and only teased Dolls for being American, like, _once_ a day. It took a lot of restraint on her part because he was constantly being _so_ American. He wasn’t even allowed to touch milk bags since the Great Flood of 2016 that rendered their kitchen uninhabitable. Which was why, during a routine grocery shop, Wynonna found herself staring at the tray of Kinder eggs on the counter, concocting a devious plan.

“Sorry,” she said absently to Tracy, the cashier, “I’m just gonna-” And then she reached out and upended the entire tray of wrapped chocolate eggs onto the conveyer belt.

Tracy looked like she was definitely going to tweet about this later. “What do you need - ” she paused to count “-nineteen Kinder eggs for?” 

“I’m starting a farm,” Wynonna deadpanned.

The next day she broke into Dolls’ weapons cache and nestled them between the grenades and handguns, knowing that he’d fucking lose it when he found out.

Except, he didn’t. 

In fact, he said nothing about it for _weeks_ , and then one morning, Wynonna was strapping on her holster when she noticed that instead of Peacemaker nestled inside, there were nineteen little plastic toys glued together in the shape of a gun. 

“Motherf-”

 

V

Wynonna never had to give a shit before. Before she knew Dolls and Doc, and back when Waverly used to stay out of danger, she never had to think about anyone but herself. But then she had seen her little sister with a noose around her neck and everything had changed. Even when Wynonna was out on her own, with a gun to a revenant’s head, she still couldn’t silence the fear that just by existing, just by being the heir, someone she cared about would get caught in the crosshairs.

She hated being right. 

Wynonna had put a bullet between the revenant’s eyes and at the first lick of flames she turned away from its screaming to find Dolls bleeding out into the snow. A flurry of curses fell from her lips as she ran over to him and checked for damage. 

“I’m okay, I’m okay-”

“If you were okay you wouldn’t be making a shitty red snow angel right now. Stay still, dammit. Let me see.” 

“I just need- I have-” 

Wynonna, tired of of his protests, reached over to cradle his head between her hands, forcing him to look her in the eye. “Stop being so fucking stubborn for once and let me take care of you.” 

His eyes softened, and her heart ached at the sight, and only then did Wynonna realise what she had said. Dammit, she was getting far too attached to this nerd. She forced herself to look away and inspect the wound.

“Lucky for us, he was a lousy shot,” she said with relief. “The bullet’s just taken a chunk out of your leg.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“Smartass,” she muttered under her breath. “It’s a graze,” she said, this time the other side of the truth. She swallowed her feelings and reached down to help him up. “Come on, there’s a hospital not far from here.”

They got the wound cleaned up and stitched up and Dolls spent the entire time insisting that he could have done it himself. (“Free healthcare,” Wynonna reminded him, “Gotta use it and abuse it while you can.”) And then, she drove him to his motel. 

“God, I hate this place,” Wynonna complained as she helped him through the door. “Everytime I visit, I discover two new shades of beige.”

“Ha ha,” he said sarcastically as she dropped him onto the patterned beige bedspread. “It’s not that bad.”

“It _is_ that bad. I don’t know why you don’t come live on the homestead like Doc or get some place - _any_ place - more permanent.” She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth; she knew why; she just didn’t like thinking about it. “I know, I know, it’s because you’re gone as soon as the case of the Ghost River Triangle is closed, but… you’re probably around for a while longer, right?” she said, eying him from across the room. “It would make sense.” 

“Probably.”

“Right, whatever,” she said, abandoning the conversation with haste. “So, do you want a hand…?” she gestured vaguely towards the bathroom and then at his injured leg. “Or?”

He looked horrified by the suggestion and shook his head. “No, I’m fine, I told you, I can manage.”

She rolled her eyes in that aggressive way she’d seen mirrored back at her countless times, and realised for the first time what it must feel like when a stubborn asshole tells you to fuck off even though they _obviously need your help_. No wonder Dolls spent his life being angry at her. 

“Okay then,” she said. But then, instead of moving, she hovered in front of the bed, still stuck between Dolls and the door.

“Okay then,” he repeated back at her slowly, clearly expecting her to move. 

“So I’m just going to-” she gestured to the door behind her. 

“Right,” he said, and ducked his head. 

It felt like a dismissal and she now had no choice but to retreat, but just as her hand landed on the doorknob, he called out her name.

She turned back and found that he was smiling softly at her, and his eyes, wide and open, looked straight into hers. “Thank you,” he said, too goddamn ardently.

“Yeah,” she said, stumbling at the door, torn between running away from Feelings, and running towards them. “I’m glad you’re… safe.” She cleared her throat and tried for levity, “You’re not allowed to die on me, you hear?”

He solemnly nodded. “I promise.” 

She couldn’t take how earnestly he was looking at her; in such an un-Dolls way, so human and so fucking vulnerable, that it caused a storm of emotion inside her. “Fuck it,” she muttered and darted forward, grabbing his head between her hands like she had done in the red snow, but this time pressing her lips firmly against his forehead. She held him in place. Her eyes scrunched tightly shut, blocking the tears of relief that threatened to fall. Safe. He was safe.

She gasped and pulled away. Her brain was suddenly awake and demanding an explanation for her actions. Her hands fell, she hastily retreated, and she only got a glimpse of his stunned expression as she made for the door.

 

VI

Dolls was an honorary member of the Earp household, which meant that sometimes Wynonna forgot he didn’t actually live there. 

“Okay, so you can swing by the homestead and grab the file,” she said into her phone as she jumped into the car, “and I’ll head on over to Shorty’s and then meet you at the office after.”

There was a pause across the line. “I didn’t think Waverly was home.”

“She’s not?” Wynonna said, trying to connect the dots, and then it clicked just as the engine roared to life. “Oh. The door will be locked. Right. Okay. Okay, there’s a spare key-”

“Earp, please don’t tell me you keep a spare key under the mat.”

“Of course I don’t,” she said, and waited for his sigh of relief before adding, “It’s under the planter.” 

She could actually hear him facepalm over the phone. 

“You know what?” she said as she reversed out the parking lot, “I’ll get you a key.”

“A key,” he said with suspicion, “to your place?”

“Yeah.”

The silence went on for far too long so she added, “Don’t be weird about it, Dolls. It’s a key, not an engagement ring.” 

The following silence was even longer and weirder. Wynonna resisted the urge to bang her head against the steering wheel.

“Okaaaaaaay,” she said, “So, I’ve gotta go.”

“Are you… _driving_ , Earp? You shouldn’t call and drive-” 

“Gotta go!” 

VII

It made sense that Dolls liked sports. After all, he was A) a man, and B) American. So the stereotype should fit, but he’d also never mentioned so much as the Super Bowl before.

“Waverly, you’re starting to freak me out,” Wynonna said, turning away from the coffee machine with a fresh mug to interrogate her sister. Waverly was perched on a table in the sheriff's office and had been staring at Wynonna for the past five minutes. “Just spit it out already would you?”

“I just…” Waverly trailed off as she glanced around at their open surroundings, she appeared to think better of it and hopped down from the table to whisper to Wynonna. “I know a secret,” she said gleefully.

“Uh-huh.”

“About Dolls,” Waverly added with another excited grin.

Damn her curiosity and damn her sister for abusing it, but Wynonna was suddenly _very_ interested. She tried to play it cool though, for appearance's sake. “Really?” she said, stirring her coffee. “Is it that he likes Taylor Swift? Because I found _1989_ in his car weeks ago.”

“No, but-” Waverly cut herself off. “What? Really? I didn’t have him figured as a _Blank Space_ kind of guy-”

“Waves, come on.”

“Okay, okay, so Nicole and I went to the hockey game last weekend, right? Because Brad was playing - you know Brad? From school. He had that-” 

“Power Rangers backpack,” Wynonna said at the same time Waverly said, “blond goatee.” 

They both looked at each other with horror. 

“Urgh,” Wynonna said, shaking herself out of it. “And you dated that guy?”

“We did _not_ date. He was my lab partner for _one_ semester-”

“Alright, alright,” she said, holding her hands in surrender. “So, what’s Brad got to do with Dolls?”

“Oh, nothing,” Waverly said casually. 

Wynonna rolled her eyes, about to give up on this conversation when Waverly added: “But it meant that we were there at the hockey game and so was…” she nodded her head towards the closed office door where Dolls was currently working.

Wynonna’s jaw fell open. “No way!”

“Way,” she retorted in amused disbelief. “He had one of those foam fingers and everything. He was cheering so loudly that we heard him across the rink.” She barely kept her laughter in as she added, “It was kinda cute.”

Wynonna shook her head with a huff. “Okay, you’re making this up, there’s no way Dolls would spend his Saturday night watching a recreational sport, outside the office, voluntarily, with other human beings, instead of... I dunno, reading case files, or defragmenting his computer or… whatever else boring people do in their freetime.” 

“At one point he started one of those chants, you know the ones-”

“Oh my god,” Wynonna said as her sister demonstrated, trying to put the two pictures together in her mind. Dolls. Having fun. At _sports_. “Are you sure?” she asked when Waverly was done. “Was he, I dunno, with someone? On a date? Possessed? Kidnapped?”

Waverly bit down on her lip, shaking her head. “Nope, he was there alone.”

“Alone?” she asked, and cursed herself for the feeling that arose in her gut at the word. He shouldn’t have to go to hockey games alone. He had friends, right? But, probably not here. Then, he could have asked her, couldn’t he? Why didn’t he? Why did he have to be so secretive about _everything_? She would have gone with him. Eaten the junk food and watched the men rough each other up and pretend to care about the game. Right? She could have done that. 

“Yeah, Nicole suggested that we go talk to him but-”

“Noooooo,” Wynonna said, shaking her head. “He would’ve hated that. He hates being caught out. I just… can’t believe he likes _sports_.”

Waverly shrugged in amused disbelief. “I guess he has to like _something._ ”

“Sure, but baking and hockey?”

“And Taylor Swift, apparently.”

Wynonna snorted. “He is _so_ weird,” she said. And then she startled, not knowing when she had begun to say that with such genuine fondness, like his weirdness was hers to have. 

 

VIII

The flirting was _constant_. Flirting was probably the only kind of “fun” Dolls entertained so Wynonna made the most of it, but she also had no idea what in hell any of it meant.

When they had first met Wynonna thought that he was genuinely hitting on her, a week or two later and she thought he was just joking around, and now, a month or two into their _thing_ , she literally had no idea what it meant. She did have an ongoing theory that it was just a weird personality quirk, like maybe he was like this with everyone he met, but she had never seen him so much as smile at anyone else, which made whatever it was definitely just _their_ thing.

The thing was, now that they’d shared a handful of intimate moments, it ought to have further meaning when he made an innuendo, but he always laughed it off like it was just a joke. It drove her _crazy_.

One morning they had bantered about how he liked women “being on top” (of their respective fields, obviously) and his smouldering look had burned a hole right through her panties, before he had finally shaken his head and laughed. It felt almost like he was laughing _at_ her, for believing that he would even want her like that. 

Dolls would never purposefully mock her so cruelly, but she had still left the office with a burning sense of shame, and a burning sense somewhere else too…

That night she tossed and turned, unable to shake the tension, even after a day of obsessing about it. Around midnight, she found her hand slipping into her panties, and when her eyes slipped closed at the sensation, she finally gave into the mental image that she had been actively pushing aside all day. 

And, oh god, if that wasn’t the best wank she’d ever had. 

IX

Wynonna woke up to a loud crash. She grabbed Peacemaker and ran into the living room in her nightshirt to see the front door open and a snowdrift building around the prone body of her partner in the entranceway. 

She swore as she raced forward to haul him up. He was conscious at least. “I swear to god, Dolls-” but her stream of swearing stopped when her hands touched his skin. Frozen. Her heart stopped in tandem.

“Caught,” he gasped, “Out.”

She didn’t stop to ask questions as she pulled him up and inside. He started to take off his coat but between his stiff joints, his frozen fingers, and his constant shivering, he didn’t get very far. She reached around him and pushed the coat from his shoulders, doing her best to discard the rest of his frozen clothes as she helped him inside and towards her bedroom. Luckily Waverly was at Nicole’s tonight, otherwise she’d probably have a comment or two to make about this.

“You goddamn idiot,” Wynonna growled. “What happened?”

“Revenant,” he gasped. “Pushed. In. Lake.”

She bit down on a curse as she did the math on how far he must have walked, how long he must have been in these wet clothes in the dead of winter, but she stopped herself, the calculations too much like death to continue, and stripped him instead, until he was down to his underwear. 

She grabbed whatever warm things were in reach as she dragged him into her bedroom and arranged him under the covers, piling even more blankets atop. 

“Thought we had a deal, Dolls,” she muttered as she slid under the covers beside him and scooped his shivering and stiff body into her arms. “You don’t die on me.”

He tucked his chin into her shoulder. It felt like a burn and she flinched against the cold instinctively but she refused to back away, instead pressing closer until the entire front of her body was pressed against the cold block of his body. 

“Not dead,” he murmured between shivers.

“You’d better not be,” she said. She reached out to grab the woollen hat that had fallen atop the blankets and forcibly pushed it onto his head, before gathering him in her arms again in an attempt to transfer her body heat to his.

Eventually, his shudders subsided and his heartbeat stabilized, and Wynonna removed her fingers from where she had been subtly checking his pulse. He pulled back after a minute, his head resting beside hers on the pillow, and her breath caught at the sight, only realising now that he was out of danger, just how close he really was. How _intimate_ this really was. His eyes were so wide, and earnest, and, god, she wanted to kiss him. His eyes flickered to her lips. Was he thinking the same thing? He shouldn’t be thinking the same thing. Naked. Heat. Bed.

 _Shit_.

Agonisingly slowly, his hand moved towards her… but then, stilled, and moved upwards towards… towards his head. His brow furrowed. Wynonna cringed. 

“What _the fuck_ am I wearing?” he exclaimed as he pulled off the hideous orange woollen hat.

Wynonna laughed and wrestled the hat from his hands, pulling it back over his head. He squirmed beneath her. “It’s cute,” she protested, pushing it down over his ears. “I think it suits you.”

He scowled at her but she couldn’t take it seriously when he was wearing the ridiculous hat that half-covered his eyes. “What?” she said through her laughter, “You don’t like it? Aunt Gus will be so disappointed.”

“I swear, Wynonna, if you hadn’t just saved my life-”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, waving off his protests, but she pitied him enough to roll it up a little so he could see. _Mistake_ , her conscience said as soon as she saw those damn brown eyes again, all warmth and comfort, looking back up at her. She could let herself love this man if he could ever love her back. She knew it. If she let herself look at him for too long, she’d never look away. 

She tore her eyes away, cleared her throat, and extracted herself from bed without looking back. “Cocoa. Tea. Hot drink. That’s what you need.” 

“And what I need is a goddamn whiskey,” she muttered. 

 

X

They ended up on a stakeout, tailing some revenant's buddy, which was much more boring than every cop movie made it out to be. They’d finished the required coffee and doughnuts an hour ago, and the son of a bitch they were tailing still hadn’t had the courtesy to emerge from this godforsaken warehouse. 

“I’m boooooored,” Wynonna complained for the hundredth time, stretching her feet out onto the dashboard and leaning back against the headrest as far as it would go. 

Dolls chuckled in that adorable way of his and made a half-hearted attempt to bat her feet down from the dash. “Come on Earp, look alive.”

Wynonna sighed dramatically, and rolled her head until she was looking across at Dolls, showing just how unimpressed she was. He ducked his head with a smile and a little shake of his head though, and then it was really hard to stay angry at him. She bit her lip and looked out the windshield again at the dormant warehouse. They were approaching dangerous levels of flirty and the car was already starting to feel thick with tension, but then… Wynonna saw the perfect distraction.

“Is this why you have 1989?” she asked, brandishing the CD from where it was stashed in the car door pocket. “Is this your big secret to surviving stakeouts? Doughnuts and _Shake It Off_?”

Dolls had the audacity to look shocked at the accusation. “That’s… not mine.”

“Uh-huh,” Wynonna said, unimpressed. “Because you routinely let teenage girls borrow your secret Black Badge car. Here I thought you were meant to be this big shot detective and you couldn’t even hide your Top 40 guilty pleasures from me.”

Dolls smirked - in a secretly pleased kind of way - and Wynonna nearly lost her shit.

“Goddammit,” she swore. “You did this on purpose, didn’t you?” she accused. “You knew I’d find it, you sly-”

“Hey,” Dolls interjected, pulling the CD out of her hand, and stashing it over on the driver’s side. “Don’t tell me you and Waverly didn’t enjoy speculating over it. I bet you even listened to it ‘for research’ didn’t you?” 

Wynonna refused to admit she was speechless but it was something close as she stared open-mouthed at Dolls, and tried put some words together. 

Dolls laughed. A rare full-bodied laugh, head thrown back against the car seat and a hand on his chest, and her heart did some somersaulting which was entirely unfair given the situation. He wiped - what Wynonna hoped was a _false_ tear - from his eye. “Oh my god,” he wheezed. “You did, didn’t you?” 

“I hate you,” Wynonna managed. 

He was still laughing and in the back of her mind, Wynonna wondered if she’d ever seen him laugh so much. Her heart was already warming an embarrassing amount, when, between chuckles, he joked, “Nah, you love me.” 

Wynonna shook her head and bit her lip, trying to dislodge the sappy smile that had taken residence on her face. Fuck Dolls, man, fuck him. “Someone sure is confident about that.” His smile started to fall and she hurriedly attempted to remedy the damage, “I mean, you’re alright,” she said, “for a law-abiding, sneaky-handed nerd, you’re _alright_ ,” she said, drawing the word out and rolling her eyes dramatically.

“Alright?” Dolls repeated with a grin, “On an Earp scale, I’d say that’s pretty good. I’ll take that.” 

He looked across to her again, his eyes full of warmth and something scarier, and Wynonna snapped her eyes away and back to the warehouse outside. “Seriously though,” she said, “What music _do_ you like?”

“Wynonna,” he complained, dragging out the syllables.

“Come oooooon,” she begged. “If this was the boring ‘getting to know you’ part of a first date, and your date asked you, ‘so, Xavier,’” Wynonna said in a high-pitched voice, propping her head on her hands and batting her eyelashes at him, “‘what music do you like?’ what’s your answer, eh? Come on, pretend a pretty girl you wanna sleep with is asking you, what do you say?” 

Dolls smiled at her, slowly and sexily, and Wynonna realised that she’d just given him the most opportune flirting opening of the season, but the bait was apparently _too_ easy for even Dolls to take, as he just turned his head away and raised his arms in a half-hearted shrug. “I guess… I’m mostly a Blues fan. A little punk rock, a little R’n’B, sure, and some stuff on the charts isn’t half bad, but… yeah, you can’t beat classic blues.”

“See,” Wynonna said with exaggeration. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” 

Dolls laughed and swatted her arm.

“Punk rock though… interesting.”

“Oh, let me guess,” Dolls drawled, “that’s _your_ thing. Angry, loud, no respect for authority… Very you.”

“Eh,” Wynonna said with a shrug. “What can I say? It’s no Taylor Swift.”

 

XI

Wynonna didn’t realise her own sister had conned her into a double date until they were settling down to watch _Pride and Prejudice_ (of all the films in the world, _really_ , Nicole?) and Waverly had said with faux-innocence, “Why don’t you take the couch, Wynonna? Plenty of room.”

There was _not_ plenty of room. There was Dolls, uncomfortably cradling a bowl of popcorn like his life depended on it, hunched in on himself on one end of the couch, and the two loved-up lesbians sat on the stack of cushions on the floor, their backs to the couch, and Wynonna, having been trained to detect a trap since before she could walk, was aghast that she had not, for some reason, seen this coming. 

Waverly raised her eyebrow as if to dare Wynonna to comment, but Wynonna couldn’t drag her sister for the very obvious trap without admitting that there was in fact a problem with her sitting next to Dolls, right in front of Dolls. She grimaced and lent down to whisper, “You’re dead,” to her sister as she passed. She was pretty sure she saw Waverly and Nicole covertly fistbump as she tried to perch as nonchalantly as possible on the opposite armrest from Dolls. 

The position proved uncomfortable and too far away from the popcorn before Mr Darcy had even appeared on screen. She slunk down until she was curled up on the far end of the couch, still a respectable distance away from Dolls. Sometime between the first dance and the second, Wynonna began to relax and unfurled her legs a little. This was still all fine until Dolls had an extreme overreaction to some hand-holding action and flailed with a squeaking noise, sending the bowl of popcorn flying. They ended up both grabbing for it, causing a tangle of blankets and legs and fingers as they tried to right the bowl before the entire thing was upended on the lovesick puppies below.

They seemed oblivious though, even as a stray kernel or two fell between them. 

Dolls coughed awkwardly. “Sorry, I, er-” 

“No, it’s okay, I-”

They were shushed by Nicole, which seemed unfair as she was hardly even watching the damn movie, but they both fell silent, still frozen in their awkward, tangled arrangement. 

Dolls smiled softly at her. To apologize, she supposed, but it melted her insides a little anyway. He then began to retreat - with the bowl of popcorn, the selfish son of a bitch - but not before one of his fingers grazed hers and took her breath with it. 

Wynonna bit her lip and shuffled away again, but noticed that neither of them retreated quite as far and their socked feet remained tangled under Aunt Gus’ blanket. 

The lovebirds fell asleep sometime in Derbyshire, and Wynonna could have escaped if she wanted, but she was warm and comfortable, and Dolls had slumped across the couch so that his legs were pressed against hers. His head was pillowed on the armrest and his eyes were drooping in an adorable, soft, almost vulnerable way. She had never seen him looking so peaceful. Even when he had spent the night in her bed after his encounter with the frozen lake, she had not seen him sleeping. She had spent the night on the couch like the perfect lady after making sure he was okay. So this was… different. Intimate. 

The credits started rolling and Wynonna realised she’d spent more time watching Dolls dozing than she had the end of the movie, and it was easy, in her sleepy state, to slip a little further down the couch, tilt her head to the side, and let Dolls’ warmth lull her to sleep. 

 

XII

The flirting was bad enough, but did he really have to call her ‘partner’ too? She supposed, in the literal definition of the word, that’s what they were - a two-person team that combated evil - but was it _necessary_ to use that exact word in _all_ situations? No. No, it fucking wasn’t. 

Saturday night and they go into the city to infiltrate a shitty nightclub and the bouncer had the goddamn nerve to let Wynonna in but not Dolls, presumably because he didn’t have requisite body parts. Wynonna would have handled the situation fine with a flirty smile and possibly a dick-punch, but, no, Dolls decided that now was the time to intervene.

“I’m with her,” he told the bouncer, with no room for argument. “I’m her partner.” 

And _what_?

She turned to glare at Dolls but he was already in some sort of testosterone-filled eye fuck with the bouncer. Oh. Right. The bouncer looked at her tits and now Dolls felt he had to defend her honour or some shit. 

“Okay,” she said before they followed up this silent pissing contest with fists, and grabbed Dolls hand, pulling him into the club with her, “We’re going.” 

She rounded on him as soon as they had turned the corner and entered the dark, depressing, corridor that every seedy club seemed to posses “What the fuck is your problem?” 

“ _My_ problem?”

“Yeah, _your_ problem, you were two seconds away from punching that dude’s lights out.”

Dolls scowled. “He was being inappropriate.” 

“Okay, newsflash. Men are always inappropriate. But I don’t need you to come to my rescue or whatever the fuck that was.” 

“What?” he said, flabbergasted. “I barely said anything!”

“You called me ‘partner’!” Wynonna said, hating how her heart clenched at the fucking word. Hating even more how Dolls’ face fell. 

He nodded to himself, eyes to the ground. “So _that_ ’s why you have a problem, of course.”

“No, I just-”

“Forget it, Earp.”

“You just…” Wynonna clenched her teeth. “We’re not… _that_. You can’t make it sound like we’re that. Because we’re _not_.”

Dolls was either going to shoot something or cry, and honestly Wynonna felt much the same. It was just so _frustrating_. They had a _thing_ but Dolls refused to make it a _Thing_ for whatever stupid fucking Boy Scout reason he had but he also refused to leave it well enough alone. 

He nodded. Finally. Solemnly. “Yeah. I guess we’re not.” 

And then, with a sad smile, he turned and walked away. 

 

XIII

Wynonna had had a shitty night. After their non-fight at the club, some revenant with a death wish and a serious case of bad breath had put a knife to her throat. And sure, after they’d wrestled it to the ground, Dolls had punched the crap out of it, which kinda helped, and Peacemaker sent the gross thing to its death, but it was still the kind of thing to give a girl nightmares. 

Dolls had hovered around her like a mother hen afterwards but she couldn’t deal with her _feelings_ of all things after Near Death Experience #17, which meant she also felt shitty for telling her partner to fuck off when he was clearly just being concerned. 

She approached the office well after midday, cowardly hoping that Dolls would already be out, but nope. There he was, sat in front of the Murder Wall, shoulders sagged, and probably expecting some kind of apology. Fuck. 

She knocked softly and entered holding the dual-tray of coffee for him to see. “I got coffee.”

He nodded but didn’t turn around. Her chest began to swirl with the very feelings she’d been trying to suppress. Concern. Guilt. And the one she daren’t name. 

“Dolls?” she called out, absently placing the coffee on the table. “Are you okay?” She approached carefully, like one would a wild animal, but he didn’t so much as twitch. “Look, I’m sorry about last night, I was freaked and-”

He turned to see her then, finally, and the sight of it made her speechless mid-sentence. He looked _terrified_. 

“Xavier…” she tried, probably sounding as pathetic as she felt. “Whatever’s wrong, we can-”

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, she saw fierce determination staring back. “Wynonna,” he said, “Are you free tonight?” 

“Uh,” she said, caught off guard. “Yeah. Why? We got some demon hunting to be doing?”

“I thought we could have dinner.”

“Uh…” Wynonna trailed off, utterly confused. She noticed that his fingers were digging into the table, no matter how steady his eyes were. “Dinner?”

“Yeah,” he said. “No bad guys, no stakeouts, just… you, me, and overpriced wine.”

Wynonna looked away with a smile because this could not possibly be happening, no way. “Careful, Dolls, it sounds like you’re asking me out.” 

She was pretty sure she _heard_ him gulp. She looked back to him just in time to see him straighten his shoulders, his grip tighten against the table ledge, and his eyes confidently boring into hers. “Maybe I am.” 

_Fuck_ , Wynonna thought. For a good ten seconds all her brain was capable of saying was _Fuck_. She had no idea what her feelings were doing because she was suddenly nauseous, and sweaty, and… yep, that’s arrhythmia alright. Holy shit, she was having a heart attack because he was asking her out. She fell back against the opposite table and tried to remind herself that she was an Earp for fuck’s sake and entirely above something as pathetic as _swooning_ over a boy. 

“You alright there, Earp?”

Wynonna held her hand up, “Yeah, just… gimme a minute.”

He did, and when she looked back up, he was still looking at her with earnest determination.

Finally, she asked, “Isn’t this breaking some kinda Black Badge protocol or something?”

He ducked his head. “More like four, seeing as you’re a person of interest as well as my partner.”

Wynonna laughed. “Oh good, _four_ protocols.”

When Dolls didn’t seem at all perturbed, she nearly lost it. 

“You’re Dolls!” she exclaimed, “You’ve never even broken a speed limit in your life, yet alone-”

“ _Wynonna_ ,” he urged, in that way he had of trying to shut her up. She wasn’t sure when it started working. “I’m not messing around. If you want to say ‘no’ then-”

“No,” she interrupted, starting forward, as if she could physically stop him from getting the wrong idea. “I… you know I…” she broke off into a frustrated groan. “That I… _like_ you,” she muttered under her breath, annoyed at the immaturity of the sentence. 

He ducked his head with a smile that sent her heart into a flutter all over again. “Then, what is it?”

Wynonna shrugged. “I’m just… trying to understand, I guess _._ This is very un-Dolls behaviour.”

Dolls folded his arms and bit his lip in thought, and Wynonna took a little moment to enjoy the fact that it was now _him_ that had to talk about Feelings. “I couldn’t sleep last night,” he admitted finally. “I kept seeing…” he motioned vaguely but she got his meaning; she was haunted with memories of Dolls inches from death too. “The rules are in place to prevent personal attachments, from making things unprofessional, but Iast night…” he gave a one-armed shrug, “I realised what good was that, if I was already attached?”

Wynonna blushed on his behalf. “Attached, huh?” she teased, and then bit her lip before daring to admit, “I get that.” 

Dolls did some sort of dangerously cute frowning / smile combo as he looked at her through his eyelashes. “Was that your way of saying, ‘yes Xavier, I feel the same way, I’d love to go to dinner with you’?” 

“No,” Wynonna said with a smile, pushing up from the table and sauntering towards him. “That was my way of saying, ‘yes, Xavier, I feel the same way, but how ‘bout we skip the dinner and get straight to the fun part?’”

She heard his sharp inhale even before she stepped into his space and saw the way his eyes grew wide. “‘The fun part?’ That’s, a... uh, interesting proposition.” 

_‘Interesting proposition_ ,’ she thought as she stepped between his legs, _trust him to make the sex sound about as fun as a biology textbook_. But she couldn’t mock him on this, not when he’d finally - god, _finally_ \- had the guts to admit to this thing between them. Her amusement transformed into a grin as she slipped onto his lap and felt his palm spread firmly across her lower back. She was honest-to-god _giddy_ and that was even before she caught the look in his eyes that made her heart pound. She smiled, lips tantalizingly close to his, just to savour the way his body tilted towards her like a magnet, before she finally put the games aside, and let herself have what they’d spent so long denying. 

 

(+1)

“So…” Wynonna started as soon as Dolls had finished breathing fire. “You’re a dragon.”

Dolls huffed and Wynonna could feel the movement of air brush her hair as she stooped under his arm to support him. They stood in the middle of Shorty’s, clinging to each other under the guise of support as the others hurried to busy themselves. She could feel his warm body pressed against hers and she missed his touch so much that tears pricked her eyes. God, she’d been so lost without him. 

“‘m not a dragon,” he murmured, before he seemed to come back to himself and his hand clenched the scruff of her jacket as if desperate to keep ahold of her. “ _Wynonna_ ,” he half-cried half-begged, “I should’ve told you, before all of this, I should have…”

She shushed him as he swayed a little on the spot and used the opportunity to step even closer towards him. “You’re here, Dolls. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter.”

He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, like he was breathing her in, as he held her to his chest. “I missed you, Wynonna, so much.”

Wynonna smiled into his shoulder. “Yeah, I know.” She wanted to leave it there, but his hand unclenched and shifted across her shoulder until he was holding her in an actual embrace, and she figured Waverly and the others were too far away to listen, so she whispered her confession to him, “I missed you too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I made a really shitty cake. I could’ve done with your baking skills.”

He laughed, pulling away to look at her with a smirk. “Oh yeah?”

Wynonna shrugged, trying to not make it too obvious that she had clearly been missing his help in other, more demonic matters as well. And just missing him, period. “Yeah. Just the cake. Nothing else.”

He smiled at her, all crooked and sweet, in that way that meant he hadn’t bought her nonchalance at all. His thumb stroked her cheek and she choked back an involuntary sob at how good it felt. They’d barely touched lips before they’d been interrupted by the Evil of the Week and then separated by Black Badge before it could be repeated, but god, if she hadn’t thought about their kiss every day since. 

“You’re okay with this then?” he whispered.

She had been staring so deep into his eyes, lost in her thoughts and her instincts, that it took her an embarrassingly long time to make sense of the words. She shook her head and cleared her throat. “That you’re a fire-breathing dragon? Yeah. It’s kinda hot.”

He sighed, exasperated. “Are you just saying that for the pun?”

“I better not be, it’s a terrible pun.” 

He chuckled and she felt the resonance deep in her chest. “Besides,” he said, resting his forehead against hers, “I told you, I’m not a ‘dragon,’ I’m-”

Wynonna quickly raised a finger to press against his lips, and mercifully, he fell silent. “Dolls, don’t ruin this for me. There’s no way that whatever nerdy explanation you have is going to trump dragons. No _way_.”

He pressed his lips against her finger in approximation of a kiss and Wynonna let her hand drop to the side, cupping his cheek. There was so much she could say - all the things he had missed, all the things she felt, all the things she wanted to do - but it was worth setting his fears at rest first. 

“You’re human, Xavier,” she reassured him. “Even if you can breathe fire like a motherfucking dragon, you’re still human in the ways it counts.”

His lips quirked to the side and she wondered if he could see kinder eggs and cheesy music and sleepy sniffles on the couch like she could. He wasn’t a mystery to her anymore. He was a person. _Her_ person. 

This time she didn’t care how sappy it looked as she tilted her head to meet his lips. She didn’t even care that Waverly was in the room, or that Doc cleared his throat awkwardly, she barely even registered that Jeremy was squeaking in the background. Dolls was back and kissing her and all she wanted to do was take this nerdy human home. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please do talk to me about your Dolls headcanons. I also have a [tumblr](http://vands88.tumblr.com/) if that's your thing. <3


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